Page:Frederick Faust--Free Range Lanning.djvu/18

14 brilliant square of the door, and the peculiar scent which came from the iron went sharply to the nostrils of Jasper. He got up and straightened his long, age-withered limbs as a horseman entered the shop. He came in a manner that pleased Jasper. There was a rush of hoofbeats, a form darting through the door, and in the midst of the shop the rider leaped out of the saddle and the horse came to a halt with braced legs. It knocked up a cloud of dust that blew slowly over to Jasper in the rear of the shop.

"Hey, you!" called the rider as he tossed the reins over the head of his horse. "Here's a hoss that needs iron on his feet. Fix him up. And look here"—he lifted a forefoot and showed the scales on the frog and sole of the hoof—"last time you shoed this hoss you done a sloppy job, son. You left all this stuff hangin' on here. I want it trimmed off nice an' neat. You hear?"

The blacksmith shrugged his shoulders. "Spoils the hoof to put the knife on the sole, Buck," said the smith. "That peels off natural." "H'm," said "Buck" Heath. "How old are you, son?" "Oh, old enough," answered Andy cheerily. "Old enough to know that this exfoliation is entirely natural." The big word stuck in the craw of Buck Heath, who brought his thick eyebrows together. "I've rid horses off and on come twenty-five years," he declared, "and I've rid 'em long enough to know how I want 'em shod. This is my hoss, son, and you do it my way. That straight?"

The eye of old Jasper in the rear of the shop grew dim with wistfulness as he heard this talk. He knew Buck Heath; he knew his kind; in his day he would have eaten a dozen men of such rough words and such mild